


17

by deanpendragon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Birthday, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 07:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8153848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deanpendragon/pseuds/deanpendragon
Summary: The team's birthday "gifts" to Tsukishima are terrible, and Yamaguchi intends to upstage them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> the summary sounds dirty but let me stress that it is not
> 
> alright lovelies, it's the MOST lovely's birthday today (or at least it was when i was writing this) and i wanted to do him some justice!! so here he and yams are in all their birthday goodness. happy birthday tsukishima!
> 
> comments and kudos are of course appreciated <3
> 
> happy, happy (birthday) reading!

“Birthday punches!”

“My birthday isn’t until tomorrow.”

Nishinoya continues to pummel him anyway, tiny but passionate fists all up and down Kei's arm.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“That’s only twelve,” Nishinoya protests as he delivers thirteen and fourteen, “are you twelve, Tsukishima?”

Yamaguchi stands at his side looking sympathetic. _You’d better_ , thinks Kei.

Nishinoya makes the seventeenth and final punch the most vicious of them all, but Kei’s arm is already so sore that it barely registers. His subsequent beam is toothy and smug. Kei squints at the colony of poppy seeds wedged between his front teeth.

Nishinoya hops away on squat legs, back to whatever hole in the ground from which he sprouted. Yamaguchi steps forward until he’s in Kei’s peripherals, almost as if to allow Kei to land the pissy look he shoots him. And a pissy look it is—on Kei’s personal scale of _holy shit are you lucky I can’t fight to save my life,_ it’s a solid six. Yamaguchi should know better.

“Good thing you’re not fifty or something, right, Tsukki?” he tries.

Kei turns on his heel back toward the school and Yamaguchi skitters at his side.

“It just came up,” he promises, “I totally forgot it was a secret.”

“How did my birthday just _come up_ in conversation?”

Despite his malcontent, Kei still opens the door for Yamaguchi and slips into the school’s crowded hallway after him. Yamaguchi spins to face him. Kei’s only slightly distracted by the way he idly twists his tan fingers together as he speaks.

“Well, Sugawara-senpai asked me how my day was going.”

Kei waits for more. Yamaguchi blinks at him.

“That’s it?” Kei implores. “And then you said ‘ _my day’s fine and by the way_ _Tsukishima’s birthday is tomorrow_?”

“Well, I didn’t call you _Tsukishima_. But yes.”

“Yamaguchi.”

“Sorry, Tsukki. I’ll make it up to you.”

Kei hates the way his face burns at the innocent vow. He adjusts his glasses in an attempt to hide it and Yamaguchi just stares up at him, brown eyes wide with needless apology. Kei watches the classroom door over his shoulder with disinterest.

“No need. You’ve done enough already,” he says, but his tone is light, impish.

Yamaguchi grins. 

_____

  
“Seventeen texts,” says Kei, “from _each_ of them.”

The asphalt beneath their feet sucks up the warm orange glow of the late afternoon sun. It slides slowly behind the mountain, just a citrus crown atop its highest peak. The glow exacerbates Yamaguchi’s freckles. Kei can hardly look to him without becoming awe-struck. It’s best he avert his eyes from such bright and blinding things, anyway.

Yamaguchi does the math. “One hundred and eighty-seven messages?”

“One hundred and eighty-seven messages,” sighs Kei. “Actually, two hundred and four. Shimizu-senpai texted me too.”

“Lucky you,” chirps Yamaguchi, and something ugly twinges in Kei’s chest. “I didn’t even know that was a thing. Birthday texts, I mean. Well, I know you’re supposed to text someone on their birthday and stuff. But one for each year? I didn’t know that part.”

“Me either.”

“Learn something new every day, huh, Tsukki?”

Kei grins down at the pavement. Yamaguchi’s beam is bright even in his peripherals.

“Wish I hadn’t learned that,” Kei grumbles.

Yamaguchi’s not listening. He’s pulled his face into something quizzical, thumb and index finger propped under his chin. Kei watches. He half-expects to see his hair twitch as the gears inside his head spin dutifully. Kei thinks, _do I want to know?_ and subsequently decides that he does.

“What are you doing?”

Yamaguchi hums pensively.

“I’ve got to think of a way to top that,” he says, “but how do you top seventeen texts?”

“Eighteen texts?” Kei deadpans.

“That’s not enough, Tsukki. I have to do better—do _more_ than anyone else.”

Kei distracts himself by pulling his jacket tighter around his middle.

“And why’s that?” he mumbles.

Yamaguchi turns to him then, brown eyes glittering like the sun’s remaining rays have bounced off the pavement and directly into his irises. His attention is so, so warm, and Kei’s scarf and jacket suddenly seem like overkill.

“Well, I’ve got to do more than the team did for you, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi proclaims matter-of-factly. He turns his chin upward in thought once more and voices, “Thirty-four texts? You know, because that’s double seventeen. _Oh,_ or fifty-one texts! Because that’s _triple_ seventeen.”

“If you text me fifty times in succession, I will block your number.”

Yamaguchi calls his bluff. “No you won’t, Tsukki.”

“Fine. But do not do that.”

“Fine,” mimics Yamaguchi.

He sneaks a look at Kei a minute later when he thinks he’s not looking.

“Tsukki, I’m going to ask you something completely irrelevant,” he says gravely. “And I mean _completely_ irrelevant.”

A lump forms in Kei’s throat.

“Okay.”

“What’s seventeen times seventeen?”

Kei laughs outright, Yamaguchi a comfortable and contented presence at his side.

_____

  
“This is worse. This is worse than fifty texts.”

Yamaguchi’s voice sounds tinny as his reply rings through the receiver.

“I begged you not to fall asleep,” he says, way too bossy for someone who’s just called Kei at quarter till midnight. “Tsukki, can you get to the park?”

“Yes,” Kei answers groggily.

The line crackles in the short silence.

“Well, _will_ you?” asks Yamaguchi.

Kei pulls his phone from his ear and squints at the time in the top banner. He yawns.

“Yamaguchi,” he drones, “I appreciate the sentiment, I think, but you really don’t need to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday on my _official_ birthday. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Kei checks the time again. “In seven hours, in fact.”

There’s more crackling and then a disappointed, “ _Oh_.”

Kei sighs pointedly into the receiver.

“Oh. Okay, Tsukki. I’m sorry,” Yamaguchi mutters dejectedly.

That slaps Kei out of his sleepy stupor better than anything.

“No, hey,” he interjects, already pulling his socks on, “it’s fine. It’s fine, okay? I’ll be there.”

He practically hears Yamaguchi’s lips curl up in a smile, and even that’s enough to dye Kei’s face an embarrassing pink. _Not for anyone else_ , he tells himself begrudgingly as he struggles out his bedroom window, _definitely not for anyone else._

_  
______

  
He’s nearly to the park when he entertains the horrifying idea that maybe this is a group thing—a _team_ thing where Nishinoya and Hinata will spring down on him from the treetops with kazoos and the third-years present him with a measly five dollar gift card to Starbucks. Kei will never speak to any of them again. Of course, this is only after he berates them all for using Yamaguchi as bait.

But the park is vacant. Kei lets out a grateful sigh. It’s dubiously dark, too, save for the soft shine from streetlights on the very outskirts of the park and a suspicious orange dot that wobbles about in the air. The fairy light wobbles some more and then vanishes.  
  
There’s a soft, distant swear.

“Yamaguchi?” Kei implores.

“Tsukki!” a sourceless voice whisper-shouts.

There’s a faint _click_ that spawns another light, bigger this time, and it draws closer and closer to Kei until Yamaguchi manifests in front of him. The lighter’s flame makes shadows teeter across their faces in the dark.

“Just in time, Tsukki. Here, come this way. But be careful or you’ll step on it.”

Kei furrows his brow but blinks back to neutral when Yamaguchi grabs his wrist and instantly, he regrets every decision he’s made this night. The tips of his ears burn hot.

Yamaguchi leads him through the park, waving the lighter over the ground in search of something. If he didn’t have a grip on him, Kei wonders if he’d just leave. It doesn’t bode well to be with Yamaguchi in the dark, alone, quiet enough in this park to hear just the hum of crickets and his own mounting heartbeat. It’s not fair.

Yamaguchi makes a triumphant noise.

“Found it, found it. Okay, sit.”

“When did you become so bossy?” Kei asks airily.

Yamaguchi snickers. The grass crunches beneath them as they sit. Kei wrings his hands in his lap and Yamaguchi shuffles around some more in the darkness, the lighter unlit. Kei hears himself breathe. He wonders if Yamaguchi can hear him, too.

“Where’d you get a lighter?”

“Dad’s,” Yamaguchi answers distractedly. “Now hold out your hand, Tsukki.”

Kei does and Yamaguchi searches for it blindly, poking Kei in the palm with his pinky before setting something light and yet top-heavy in the center of it. The lighter’s flame ignites with a _snap_.

In Kei’s hand rests a cupcake. He can barely make out the fact that it’s chocolate under the mound of blue frosting smeared across the top, adorned with a large, green, scribbly ‘K’. Kei holds in a soft sound of surprise.

“It was all I could fit on there,” Yamaguchi tells him, “without messing it up.”

From the junction of the letter sticks a single candle, rainbow-striped.

“I know we could’ve waited until tomorrow, but I wanted to be the first one to wish you a happy birthday on your _actual_ birthday, you know?” Yamaguchi pulls his phone from his pocket—Kei absently wonders why they don’t just use those for light rather than the archaic lighter—and sufficiently blinds them both as he shows off the time: 11:59. “This, the cupcake I mean, is my fake gift, by the way. The real gift wouldn’t fit through my bedroom window. So I guess you’ll have to wait on that one.”

Kei silently worries what in the actual hell Yamaguchi has gotten him. But he forgets his concern when he feels the rough pads of Yamaguchi’s fingertips on the back of his hand, keeping it steady. With care, he brings the lighter closer to the cupcake.

“Do you want to light it, Tsukki?”

Kei shakes his head. “No. Go ahead.”

His voice is tight. He feels Yamaguchi stare at him, just for a slow, poignant second before bringing the flame to the wick of the flamboyant candle. It catches quickly and orange light trembles over Yamaguchi’s features. He’s close; closer than Kei thought he was when they initially sat down. He wonders how he could have missed that.

“Happy birthday, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi tells him, all smiles and crinkled eyes.

“It’s perfect.”

The candle flickers between them. Shadows dance across Yamaguchi’s face, flitting from one cluster of freckles to the next—a captivating sight, and Kei can’t bring himself to look away. Yamaguchi blinks at him, pupils blown huge in the near-darkness. The rich brown of his eyes invites Kei closer. He feels like he could reach out and dip his hands into the color. He feels the mahogany stream warmly through his pale fingers.

Kei’s eyes are drawn downward when Yamaguchi’s lips part. Yamaguchi tilts his head, and it seems that it’s only because he’s caught Kei’s attention that he opens his mouth further to speak.

“You know, ah, Tsukki. I have a second fake gift, sort of.”

_Sort of?_ thinks Kei.

Yamaguchi shuffles forward on his knees. His hand bumps against Kei’s that holds the cupcake. He pushes it to the side until Kei gets the hint and sets it on the grass away from them. The light casts differently from so low, warm flickers catching the pleasant curve of Yamaguchi’s jawbone.

_This is going to happen,_ Kei realizes at once.

The buzzing of crickets is no match for the uproar of his heart. 

Yamaguchi leans close and kisses him, lips dry and pressed so softly to Kei’s own. Where they touch is so vastly _warm_ compared to the autumn chill that nips at every other inch of exposed skin; hands and fingers and necks. But then Yamaguchi’s hand slides to the back of Kei’s neck and urges him closer, his palm warm, fingers pressing tenderly to Kei’s chilled skin. Kei follows easily. He tilts his head into the kiss and it’s so sweet; sweeter than the forgotten, flickering cupcake could ever ever be.

Such things so sweet never last as long as Kei wants them to. Yamaguchi pulls from him with a soft _smack._ His brown eyes are wide—not with interest but alarm, and he’s shuffling backwards like Kei himself is a flame and he’s been burnt by proximity. He looks apologetic, panicked, defeated. Kei tilts his head and Yamaguchi flinches like he’s about to be scolded. 

_How did you not know I want this?_ thinks Kei.

Yamaguchi’s eyes soften when Kei takes a loose hold of his wrist. Kei’s subsequent inquiry has Yamaguchi laughing, blushing, shuffling closer to close the distance again.

“Don’t I get seventeen?”

**Author's Note:**

> <3~


End file.
